224
The Ypres Times.
Imperial War Graves Commission describes them, are those who fell beyond the limits
of organisation, in places where courage alone held good."
In the Ypres Salient, from Langemarck to Messines, and from Poperinghe to Dadizeele,
there are 137 cemeteries containing the dead of the Empire, and in these cemeteries are
the graves of 40,000 unidentified British soldiers these, and all the others who are not
even to that extent known or marked, are the officers and men who are commemorated
on the memorials in Belgium and in the registers of those memorials.
In the Hall of Memory of the Menin Gate Memorial, the names of 55,000 officers
and men who were missing from 1914 until the night of the I5th-i6th August, 1917, are
incised in Portland stone panels, 60 panels in all, fixed to the inner walls of the Hall,
up the sides of the staircases, and inside the loggias.
The Tyne Cot Memorial carries the names of the missing of the United Kingdom
who fell between the 15th August, 1917, and the Armistice.
The Menin Gate Memorial represents (to quote the words of the Imperial War Graves
Commission) the deliberate obstinacy with which the British Empire from 1914 to 1918
refused to surrender a few square miles of Belgian soilthe Tyne Cot Memorial represents
the most desperate offensive fighting of the British Armies in France."
The missing from the units of the United Kingdom and Overseas which have the
greatest number of names on the panels on these memorials are
MENIN
GATE.
King's Royal Rifle Corps
1,442
Australians
6,218
Rifle Brigade
1,403
Canadians
7,024
Royal Fusiliers
1,337
South Africans
566
Northumberland Fusiliers
i,i45
Indians
421
British West Indies
6
TYNE COT.
Eancashire Fusiliers 1,303 Royal Warwickshire Regt. 1,035
Machine Gun Corps Northumberland Fusiliers 1,008
(Infantry) 1,181 New Zealand Forces 1,179
West Yorkshire Regiment 1,109 Newfoundland Troops 1
The above statistics will be interesting reading to many members of the Ypres League
who live overseas and have no chance of seeing those wonderfully accurate registers
issued by the Imperial War Graves Commission.
Of the 700 pilgrims sent out to the Menin Gate on 23rd-24th July, the expenses of
265 were entirely defrayed by Lord Plumer's and the Ypres League Pilgrimage Funds,
and we have sufficient money in hand to organise another free pilgrimage next year.
It has been decided to have an annual free pilgrimage for relatives of the missing
in the Ypres Salient on the third Sunday in July, as long as funds permit.
In order that those who have already helped us in this work may realise the number
of relatives concerned, I,give below a table of the missing."
Menin Gate.All Units (including Canadian and Australian
Forces) 54,^95
Tyne Cot.-United Kingdom, Newfoundland Troops and
New Zealand Forces 34,956
Hyde Park Corner (between the Douve and the Lys).
All units 11,460
Total
101,311
